NORTHAMPTON – A Springfield lawyer who organized a benefit concert for veterans in the summer of 2007 filed suit against a Northampton-based ticket outlet and its owner Eric Suher, claiming that he lost $70,000 in ticket sales because of an erroneous posting that the concert was sold out.

David A. Mech, who is also the president of First Aid for Our Troops, organized a concert for July 1, 2007 to help injured veterans including the late Army Sgt. Mark R. Ecker II, who received a grant at that show. Ecker of East Longmeadow served two tours in Iraq and lost both his legs in an explosion in Ramadi in 2007. He was killed in a car accident last year.

According to the suit filed Wednesday in Hampshire Superior Court, Mech contracted with Northampton Box Office to sell tickets for the show at the Three County Fairgrounds that featured Jefferson Starship, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, among others.

File photo by Don Treeger / The RepublicanEric Suher, owner of Northampton Box Office and the Iron Horse Entertainment Group, looks music venue he constructed last year the former Mountain Park Amusement area in Holyoke.

According to the suit, Northampton Box Office posted a notice on its web site saying that the concert was sold out and that a limited number of tickets might have been available at the door. The sold out notice was posted June 30 that year, according to the suit. Mech stated he was unaware of the notice until people at the concert asked him why the show had been listed as sold out.

Mech also said people were scalping tickets, and believes that scalpers sold 400 tickets illegally.

About 700 people attended the concert, according to the suit, with about 100 tickets sold in advance and about 200 sold on site. In all, Mech states in the suit, First Aid lost about $70,000 and the actions “caused harm to First Aid’s goodwill.”

The suit states that this was intended to be the first of many concerts and that as result “the defendant’s actions damaged the plaintiffs ability to continue those efforts due to low attendance.”

In addition, the suit charges that the scalping of tickets “unjustly enriched the defendant in the amount of $12,000.”

Suher, who owns Northampton Box Office as part of his Iron Horse Entertainment Group, said in an interview that the suit is frivolous and that Mech had contracted with his company to sell 100 tickets and also to print 1,750 that he was going to distribute on his own. Northampton Box Office sold the 100 tickets.

But Mech said that the ticket outlet was supposed to sell as many as it could.

Suher also questioned why he hadn’t heard from Mech and why the suit was filed three years later.

Mech said he was looking for an attorney to take the case and when he couldn’t find one decided to do it himself. He said people said he was wronged and what happened hurt the soldiers.

Suher said his company got very few calls about the concert, and to the charge that the box office was scalping tickets, Mech was in possession of the tickets. He also said people scalp tickets when shows are sold out, not when they’re available at the door.

“It sounds to me something went astray on his end. ... It’s a very strange situation we have a good reputation,” he said. He said Northampton Box Office sells tickets for thousands of events.